I think that, at that point, I would be looking to get a more secure safe.
And how does that equate to the original scenario? Sony changing their business?
Once I've sold something to someone, it's theirs. Not mine.
All very easy to say when the reverse engineering does not potentially hurt YOUR business or YOUR means to earn money. When it actually does, I doubt you will be that forgiving.
I didn't claim that I could. I just noticed that you stated that as a fact.
I did not - at least, it wasn't my intention. It just came out that way. But the fact remains that there is a very good chance that this will be used by people for acquiring and playing games for free, ESPECIALLY because the hack seems to make things very easy for the prospective pirate.
You claim that you accept that your morals aren't absolute, but then claim that something that goes against them is irrefutably 'wrong'. This is again subjective. There is likely no 'right' or 'wrong'. It's all just opinion.
I think you are using this idea of morals as individual perspective as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, as in "people may accept a general idea of morals for the time and place they live in, but it doesn't matter as everybody thinks differently". I do not think you would be as forgiving if it was you that was wronged.
Only if you believe that copyright infringement damages someone. There's two sides to this argument, and...Alright, that's four...No, but it certainly does bring into question the fact that people are stating that this will irrefutably hurt sales a great deal. Opinions are fine, but don't state such things as facts.
All 4 of them are COD fans and buy the annual "Kotick" shit on PS3. But if they know they could get this for free, they would jump at the chance. That is 4 sales with a near-100% probability of being lost (they were very interested when Geohot announced his first, original hack - how eager do you think they will be with this?). And do you think those will be the ONLY sales lost from this? That's me, one individual, knowing 4 people like this. How many more are out there?
If I was a normal person who was against copyright infringement, I'd blame both parties.
But you just seem to be blaming Sony for the whole thing while apparently absolving Geohot of any wrong-doing.
It is easy to pontificate about Geohot being some sort of saint who has come to deliver mankind from the evil Sony. However, I am VERY, VERY, VERY confident that were you the wronged party, you would NOT be as defensive of Geohot's actions.
It's very easy to preach about turning the other cheek when it's not yours that's been slapped.
Or so you think. Can you prove it? And, if you are able to prove it, then would you care to explain why everyone should suffer merely because some people resort to copyright infringement?
No I cannot prove it. Can you prove this will NOT lead to piracy? Argument works both ways. When it's your money on the line, you tend to think about protecting your business first.
Do you mean a child molester? A pedophile is not the same thing as a child molester.
You are splitting hairs while escaping the question in the example. Fine. Substitute "child molester" for "pedophile" in the original question and try to answer it.
Really? I don't recall the universe telling me this. I may personally be against hurting others, but I do not delude myself with beliefs that my set of morals are somehow more correct than someone else's. It is my opinion that people who knowingly hurt others should be punished (or be helped), but I'm not going to claim that it's a fact.
Do you really need "some being from above the clouds" or wherever to tell you this? I do not delude myself that my morals are THE morals either. But as I said, hurting someone/something knowingly is wrong (and you seem to agree with that, if I understand your post correctly), and THAT is what Geohot did. He hurt an entity's means to make money.
Please. Assuming that copyright infringement does cause harm in the first place, it has existed for a long, long time. Simply put, there is still likely a large amount of people who would buy games regardless of whether or not they had to (either due to their lack of knowledge in the field of technology, their personal beliefs, or their ignorance of the existence of the hacks). At the moment, this is unlikely to put a dent in their sales. If it does, it's likely going to be impossible to keep track of anyway (there's no magical way to find out how many copyright infringers there are).
I know at least 4 unscrupulous ordinary people who would not hesitate to take advantage of this (they are always discussing ways to "save" money by questionable practices, e.g. with their workarounds for subscriptions to major TV channel providers, much to my disgust). Prior to this, they weren't able to as they did not have the expertise. The public posting of this hack greatly reduces the barrier to entry, and I'm pretty sure there are a large number of people out there with such lack of scruples. And "impossible to keep track of anyway" does not magically excuse the series of actions that leads to this dent in sales.
Had I been Sony, I wouldn't have removed it all the same. They are hurting everyone who used the feature in their pursuit of money (not surprising). This is what I do not agree with.
Well, sure, I probably wouldn't have removed it either. But then Sony did what they thought best to protect THEIR business which was jeopardized BY Geohot in the first place. So I would rather blame the individual who goaded Sony into this course of action rather than Sony itself, who imo felt obliged to protect their bottom-line by inconveniencing their customers. From what I see, you want to blame Sony for the whole shebang as if Geohot had no part in this.
Anyway, it's 1:30 here in Chicago, and I have to go to sleep. Talk to you tomorrow.
As I understand it, OtherOS had already been disabled in slim PS3s (though the firmware still contained the code), and that's what Geohot was attempting to reenable. Sony's reaction was to remove OtherOS from existing fat PS3s. I may be remembering it wrong, though.
In other words, Sony decided to remove OtherOS from slim PS3 models (that is, they shipped without the option), despite the fact that the hardware can handle it without issues, a decision which certainly appears arbitrary. It looks to me like they no longer wanted to sell consoles with OtherOS enabled, and they took the first opportunity they could to disable it in the older PS3s as well (perhaps so they wouldn't have to maintain multiple sets of firmware). I would suggest that Geohot's difficult-to-execute hack was simply a convenient scapegoat for a decision Sony had already wanted to make (for whatever reason).
Further, and most important, Hotz was NOT trying to re-enable the OtherOS. His hack used the THEN-EXISTING OtherOS feature - see here. That potential danger was what Sony was trying to stem when they finally removed OtherOS from the Fat models. Thus the OtherOS removal was a RESPONSE to Hotz's original hack which ABUSED the OtherOS feature to achieve it's ends.
All *fail0verflow* did was try to get the functionality back, and Sony named them in the motion as well, so we're sort of stuck defending both them and Geohot since Sony named them together. (I do agree that the relative size of each party has nothing to do with who is right and who is wrong.)
That may or may not be true - I'm a cynical guy, 36 years of life tends to do that to you:) . My personal opinion is that the OtherOS thing became a convenient excuse for fail0verflow. However, if that was the only thing that happened, then I don't think Sony would have reacted to this extent. What they did was make public the know-how to hack the PS3, something which could maybe pose a risk to Sony from professional pirates, but was still not easily actionable for most people. So that was not too outrageous. But then Geohot, possibly eager to stake some sort of claim for himself since his earlier exploit had been mostly neutralized and his thunder stolen by fail0verflow, used this discovery to find out the PS3 root key - something that would make piracy EXTREMELY CONVENIENT, not just for pirates, but even for slightly technical-minded individuals - and then performed the godawful act of posting this to the World Wide Web.
I think Sony are certainly right in trying to protect their investment and means of making money (I think any of us would, too, if we were placed in a similarly impossible situation. I don't think any of the people defending the hackers would be as understanding if it was their means of earning that was jeopardized by this action). One potential misstep Sony may have made is in suing fail0verflow, as in my opinion, all they announced was the know-how to give you the means to expend effort yourself and hack into the PS3, hardly lawsuit material imo. But what Geohot did was inescapably wrong. He is not a kid anymore, he knows the potentially destructive effects such an open hack can have on a business.
Doesn't this have legitimate uses outside of copyright infringement?
Possibly - but the VERY REAL DANGER is that the majority of use will be exactly that - copyright infringement. And that is something Hotz is quite aware of. You do not open up an appliance you have bought and post it's secrets for the world to use and abuse. If you discovered it's secrets, fair enough - more power to you. But when you use that knowledge for bragging rights in a manner designed to weaken the business of an entity (be it an individual or a major corporation), that is either wilful damage or gross negligience.
I try to refrain from mentioning 'right' and 'wrong' in my posts without uttering the words "in my opinion" before doing so...'Right' and 'wrong' do not actually exist. They are preferences. Some people don't like murder. Some people do. Society just decided what laws it wanted to enact, but its views on morality are not factual.
I could have a discussion about morality all day with you:) . And to a certain extent that is true - the morality of a place/time/culture may be completely different from that of another. But if we are going to go with individual morality, that is a VERY, VERY gray area. A pedophile may be able to justify his/her own actions to himself/herself. Would you still defend that person's rights to his/her own morality, especially if the victim in question happened to be related to you? Would you be as understanding if the victim is somebody you actually sympathize with? I apologize for the extreme example, but I felt it was necessary to make a point. As you said, morality may be relative, but there can be said to be one core tenet in the universe - do not harm another being knowingly. Now, Sony is hardly a pure innocent individual, but the fact remains that harm, potentially great harm, has been done to it's videogames/movie business. And I, for one, happen to think Sony are absolutely in the right in this one (that does not mean I wish for Hotz's career/freedom/finances to be endangered, however).
I don't see anything wrong with it. Screaming "piracy" doesn't seem much different than screaming "terrorism" when you want to take something away from everyone. Or am I missing something here (does it have legitimate uses)?
That's your weakest point. What, exactly, are Sony taking away from people? The OtherOS feature? I did not agree with their actions, but I could certainly understand where they were coming from. The central point here is that if Hotz had not used the OtherOS feature to work out a hack and then made that public for bragging rights in the first place, Sony would NEVER have taken away the OtherOS feature from the PS3 Fats. However you spin the facts, you can't escape this one.
That's where your mental exercise falls apart. By advertising OtherOS as a feature of the device, OtherOS was one of the "express purposes" for which Sony had released the console. OtherOS was a contributing factor to many people's decision to purchase a PS3, including my own.
Agreed. Sony should not have removed the OtherOS. That being said, the decision to remove OtherOS was hardly arbitrary - it originated from Geohot's actions, which catapulted Sony into (an unfortunately rash) action.
If any entity -- whether a multinational corporation or a guy in his garage -- advertises a feature and then later arbitrarily removes the feature from already-purchased products, then that entity is definitely *not* entitled to sue its customers when they try to get that functionality back.
However, Geohot releasing the root key to the ENTIRE WORLD does NOT constitute just "trying to get the functionality back". This action constitutes releasing a hack which will make piracy easy to the entire world.
And that is definitely not right, however you spin it.
Just because Sony is a huge multinational corporation and Geohot an individual does not automatically make Sony wrong and Geohot right.
If I put myself in Sony's place, I'd have kept OtherOS. Just because a few people abuse something doesn't mean it should be removed for everyone.
If I had been in Sony's place, I might have kept OtherOS too (hence the knee-jerk reaction comment in my earlier post).
I know, I know. Tinkering with your own property is bad because "copyright infringement" or "DMCA!" If you do so much as utter those words, you now have the high 'moral' (subjective, so I honestly can't believe people use this argument) grounds!
You are clutching at strawman arguments here - You CAN tinker with YOUR property as much as you want - I don't think Sony has any real problem with that. There is no problem EVEN when you tinker with your property to the extent that it makes piracy easy.
The problem happens when you make such information PUBLIC to such an extent so that EVERY pirate in the WORLD can start "production".
Are you really saying that making such a hack widely open to SUCH AN EXTENT is really in the right? Every human being innately knows right from wrong - it's preferences that cloud the judgment.
Sony has probably been in the wrong (and on the wrong side of the law) hundreds of times before this.
Imagine this scenario.
I purchase a Swiss-Army knife on the promise that it has 12 attachments that can perform a number of functions. After I purchase it, two of those features are removed.
(Let's not forget that Sony also removed backwards compatiblity, even though briefly they had support for it with software emulation, so it doesn't require the hardware chip).
It is deemed illegal for third parties to modify the Swiss-Army knife, but a third-party posts a tutorial that shows me how to get a bottle-opener back on my knife when I paid for that functionality.
As an end-user, I'm not that concerned that someone broke a fairly silly law simply by providing me with the information to add back in functionality I paid for. I'm upset that it was removed in the first place.
Imagine this one: YOU created the Swiss-army knife. You sold it - then SOMEONE found out that two of the attachments you created could potentially be used to break into YOUR safe (a stretch, but bear with me - this is just to demonstrate that it hurts YOUR bottom-line), so you decided to remove these. Would you blame yourself for removing it or would you blame the guy who publicized the information as to how to break into your safe?
And sorry to say this, but you are reaching with the BC functionality - it was removed in SUBSEQUENT models because it was adding cost for little returns. And Sony was NOT stopping you from buying the original models with full BC, nor did it advertise full BC with non BC models - I have one of the originals with full BC, and that functionality has NOT been removed. As it did not pose a threat to Sony.
I could try to see it from Sony's perspective, except for the fact that I'm a consumer. And this is coming from a guy who has long defended Sony. Even though I was upset over the rootkit fiasco, I assumed it was one division of a massive company and I'd give them another shot. I purchased a Sony surround sound system, a new Bravia and a PS3.
But really I'm not very happy with Sony removing functionality from a device I purchased.
So you are saying that because you are a consumer, you find it hard to see from Sony's perspective. And yet viewing things from the hacker's perspective is apparently not too hard for you. Where does being a consumer fit in with the hacker's utterly immoral (in my opinion) point-of-view? It's not too hard - the perspective I'm talking about has little to do with consumers/manufacturers/service providers/hackers/crooks.
Also, from reading most of Slashdot, it seems as if a large number of people are Sony-haters (esp on this page), and are allowing this hate to guide their sense of scruples - hardly an impartial perspective (not pointing fingers at you, btw)
Even the moderators are in on this. For example, take a look at the modding pattern - you'll see that any post favoring Sony - no matter how evenly worded - remains at 1 (or 0 in the case of Anonymous Cowards), while ANY post criticizing Sony and/or favoring the hackers - no matter how well or poorly worded it may be - is eligible for a mod value greater than 1. Go through the entire page and tell me if I'm wrong
I know that this goes against what I said in my first post - i.e. "sane, rational people" - but at that time I had not read through the whole page. Reading this page from top to bottom has given me much cause to doubt the impartiality of the majority of the people evangelizing the hackers.
I'm not one of these guys who thinks piracy is great and that ip stands for "imaginary property". I believe people deserve to make money off their content. So I can understand where Sony is coming from.
The problem is two-fold.
1 - They did advertise features and then take them away. If I'm forced to use custom firmware to get those features back, then I don't have a problem with Geohot enabling people to write custom firmware.
2 - When Geohot approached Sony first, they had an opportunity to make their console more secure. Instead they decided to piss in the face of a guy trying to help them.
If I were Sony in this scenario, then I would have accepted the help of someone who discovered the exploit. That is just smart business.
Here's another exercise (bear with me): Again, put yourself in Sony's place. Now imagine Geohot came to you, and told you of a potential exploit he had discovered (while at the same time witholding details of the actual exploit, otherwise you would have had the opportunity to act on it beforehand). You decided the offer was not worth it and refused it. DOES THAT JUSTIFY Geohot publicly revealing the hack? That's like Geohot telling you "take me on or else..."
Also, and again, they took those features away BECAUSE OF THE FEAR that the aforesaid feature would lead to potential hack that pirates could use for piracy. While I do think that Sony's response with OtherOS removal was rash, it certainly CANNOT justify opening up the machine to such massive potential abuse.
Spin it whichever way, I do not think Geohot or fail0verflow have the high moral ground here
Also, from reading most of Slashdot, it seems as if a large number of people are Sony-haters (esp on this page), and are allowing this hate to guide their sense of scruples - hardly an impartial perspective (not pointing fingers at you, btw)
GeoHot released a very minor exploit that by itself did not allow pirated games.
And ArsTechnica's story suggests GeoHot approached Sony and offered to help them make the PS3 more secure and prevent piracy. Sony wasn't interested.
If you discover a security exploit, the ethical thing to do is to inform that vendor first, which he did. Sony didn't listen to him, and then he released that exploit publicly.
Furthermore, Sony said their response would be to completely remove the OtherOS option. I'm going to wager that wasn't the only way to protect against the initial exploit.
GeoHot said in response he was now motivated to completely hack the PS3. I don't have to assume it was his motivation since he said it directly.
By itself, it may not have allowed pirated games, but as I said, it had the apparent potential to make it possible, and THAT is what Sony reacted to by cutting the OtherOS functionality from Fats.
And this still does not justify opening a system WIDE OPEN to all kinds of abuse in the manner Geohot has. Where was all his honor when he released something of this magnitude OPENLY on the Internet?
The fact remains that OtherOS was allowed until it was initially used to perform a hack, at which point Sony reacted (possibly in a knee-jerk fashion). And fail0verflow has used this as a reason or an excuse to justify giving ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD the means to hack into the PS3, for whatever purpose. And then Geohot used this to do JUST THAT.
Here's an exercise: Forget for a moment that Sony is a multi-billion dollar gigantic media corporation. Imagine that the PS3 had been constructed by YOU, yourself, for the express purposes for which Sony has released this console. Now imagine that everything Sony has had to do right up to the point before suing these people. If it was YOU, and you had faced a risk to your means of earning, would you have stood idly by while praising the hackers for what they did?
You don't even need to answer me: just be honest about this to yourself
"GeoHot didn't hack the PS3 until Sony removed functionality."
Isn't it the other way around?
As far as I can see it, THIS was the correct sequence of events:
1) Sony release the Fat PS3, and advertise OtherOS for these.
2) Sony release the Slim PS3, and do NOT advertise OtherOS for these. People are given a choice and a timeline by which to buy the Fats.
3) The Fats gave people the chance to tinker with custom OS installation using OtherOS functionality. Geohot abused this by using this to come up with a potential hack.
4) Sony scrambled to shut this door opened by Geohot by removing this functionality, i.e. the OtherOS functionality was removed from PS3s that supported it BECAUSE OF GEOHOT.
5) Fail0verFlow use this as a reason (or an excuse) to hack the PS3, ostensibly for homebrew.
6) Geohot uses Fail0verFlow's efforts to release the PS3 root key on the Internet, potentially leaving the gates COMPLETELY OPEN.
7) Sony retaliate by suing (while scrambling to shut the doors opened by this potentially destructive action of Geohot).
People seem to think Sony is at fault for being hacked and the hackers are some sort of saints for pointing out Sony's weaknesses and MAKING THEM PUBLIC BEFORE GIVING SONY A CHANCE TO ACT ON THESE, and I find it hard to believe that such sane, rational people as frequent this site can accept this rationale on the part of the hackers.
Too many people are eager to blame Sony over this - while forgetting that it was the initial potential threat of hacking (the first one by Geohot which depended upon OtherOD) that galvanised them into removing that functionality from the older models.
I can't really find a reason to blame Sony for THAT.
That quote sounds worryingly similar to what the BushCo regime used to say. Something like "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear".
Hopefully this was just a slip of tongue and mind, and not an insight into the way Schmidt thinks.
Regarding your signature: "Religion Breeds Terrorism." - - Timothy McClanahan
I beg to differ - It's mostly a lack of true understanding regarding one's religion that begets religious violence. As for terrorism, my opinion is - it's rarely religious in nature - there are probably several other reasons for it though - political, economical, sociological, etc
Exactly. I had reached that same conclusion years earlier, and I'm not a researcher of anything. So apparently it took a team of "researchers" to experiment and come to a conclusion which I had figured out using common sense and logic.
"Well you get 5 free Blu-ray movies when you buy a PS3"
=> I believe HD-DVD Players have a similar promotion as well, and so HD-DVD Players' attach rate should be at around that rate as well, isn't it? So how come it isn't?
Stop deluding yourself that everyone else other than Toshiba/Microsoft are lying.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that, at that point, I would be looking to get a more secure safe.
And how does that equate to the original scenario? Sony changing their business?
Once I've sold something to someone, it's theirs. Not mine.
All very easy to say when the reverse engineering does not potentially hurt YOUR business or YOUR means to earn money. When it actually does, I doubt you will be that forgiving.
I didn't claim that I could. I just noticed that you stated that as a fact.
I did not - at least, it wasn't my intention. It just came out that way. But the fact remains that there is a very good chance that this will be used by people for acquiring and playing games for free, ESPECIALLY because the hack seems to make things very easy for the prospective pirate.
You claim that you accept that your morals aren't absolute, but then claim that something that goes against them is irrefutably 'wrong'. This is again subjective. There is likely no 'right' or 'wrong'. It's all just opinion.
I think you are using this idea of morals as individual perspective as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, as in "people may accept a general idea of morals for the time and place they live in, but it doesn't matter as everybody thinks differently". I do not think you would be as forgiving if it was you that was wronged.
Only if you believe that copyright infringement damages someone. There's two sides to this argument, and...Alright, that's four...No, but it certainly does bring into question the fact that people are stating that this will irrefutably hurt sales a great deal. Opinions are fine, but don't state such things as facts.
All 4 of them are COD fans and buy the annual "Kotick" shit on PS3. But if they know they could get this for free, they would jump at the chance. That is 4 sales with a near-100% probability of being lost (they were very interested when Geohot announced his first, original hack - how eager do you think they will be with this?). And do you think those will be the ONLY sales lost from this? That's me, one individual, knowing 4 people like this. How many more are out there?
If I was a normal person who was against copyright infringement, I'd blame both parties.
But you just seem to be blaming Sony for the whole thing while apparently absolving Geohot of any wrong-doing.
It is easy to pontificate about Geohot being some sort of saint who has come to deliver mankind from the evil Sony. However, I am VERY, VERY, VERY confident that were you the wronged party, you would NOT be as defensive of Geohot's actions.
It's very easy to preach about turning the other cheek when it's not yours that's been slapped.
Or so you think. Can you prove it? And, if you are able to prove it, then would you care to explain why everyone should suffer merely because some people resort to copyright infringement?
No I cannot prove it. Can you prove this will NOT lead to piracy? Argument works both ways. When it's your money on the line, you tend to think about protecting your business first.
Do you mean a child molester? A pedophile is not the same thing as a child molester.
You are splitting hairs while escaping the question in the example. Fine. Substitute "child molester" for "pedophile" in the original question and try to answer it.
Really? I don't recall the universe telling me this. I may personally be against hurting others, but I do not delude myself with beliefs that my set of morals are somehow more correct than someone else's. It is my opinion that people who knowingly hurt others should be punished (or be helped), but I'm not going to claim that it's a fact.
Do you really need "some being from above the clouds" or wherever to tell you this? I do not delude myself that my morals are THE morals either. But as I said, hurting someone/something knowingly is wrong (and you seem to agree with that, if I understand your post correctly), and THAT is what Geohot did. He hurt an entity's means to make money.
Please. Assuming that copyright infringement does cause harm in the first place, it has existed for a long, long time. Simply put, there is still likely a large amount of people who would buy games regardless of whether or not they had to (either due to their lack of knowledge in the field of technology, their personal beliefs, or their ignorance of the existence of the hacks). At the moment, this is unlikely to put a dent in their sales. If it does, it's likely going to be impossible to keep track of anyway (there's no magical way to find out how many copyright infringers there are).
I know at least 4 unscrupulous ordinary people who would not hesitate to take advantage of this (they are always discussing ways to "save" money by questionable practices, e.g. with their workarounds for subscriptions to major TV channel providers, much to my disgust). Prior to this, they weren't able to as they did not have the expertise. The public posting of this hack greatly reduces the barrier to entry, and I'm pretty sure there are a large number of people out there with such lack of scruples. And "impossible to keep track of anyway" does not magically excuse the series of actions that leads to this dent in sales.
Had I been Sony, I wouldn't have removed it all the same. They are hurting everyone who used the feature in their pursuit of money (not surprising). This is what I do not agree with.
Well, sure, I probably wouldn't have removed it either. But then Sony did what they thought best to protect THEIR business which was jeopardized BY Geohot in the first place. So I would rather blame the individual who goaded Sony into this course of action rather than Sony itself, who imo felt obliged to protect their bottom-line by inconveniencing their customers. From what I see, you want to blame Sony for the whole shebang as if Geohot had no part in this.
Anyway, it's 1:30 here in Chicago, and I have to go to sleep. Talk to you tomorrow.
As I understand it, OtherOS had already been disabled in slim PS3s (though the firmware still contained the code), and that's what Geohot was attempting to reenable. Sony's reaction was to remove OtherOS from existing fat PS3s. I may be remembering it wrong, though. In other words, Sony decided to remove OtherOS from slim PS3 models (that is, they shipped without the option), despite the fact that the hardware can handle it without issues, a decision which certainly appears arbitrary. It looks to me like they no longer wanted to sell consoles with OtherOS enabled, and they took the first opportunity they could to disable it in the older PS3s as well (perhaps so they wouldn't have to maintain multiple sets of firmware). I would suggest that Geohot's difficult-to-execute hack was simply a convenient scapegoat for a decision Sony had already wanted to make (for whatever reason).
You are wrong - Hotz stated that he had begun working on hacking the PS3 in Summer of 2009 - search for "begun the hack last summer", before the Slims had been introduced.
Further, and most important, Hotz was NOT trying to re-enable the OtherOS. His hack used the THEN-EXISTING OtherOS feature - see here. That potential danger was what Sony was trying to stem when they finally removed OtherOS from the Fat models. Thus the OtherOS removal was a RESPONSE to Hotz's original hack which ABUSED the OtherOS feature to achieve it's ends.
All *fail0verflow* did was try to get the functionality back, and Sony named them in the motion as well, so we're sort of stuck defending both them and Geohot since Sony named them together. (I do agree that the relative size of each party has nothing to do with who is right and who is wrong.)
That may or may not be true - I'm a cynical guy, 36 years of life tends to do that to you :) . My personal opinion is that the OtherOS thing became a convenient excuse for fail0verflow. However, if that was the only thing that happened, then I don't think Sony would have reacted to this extent. What they did was make public the know-how to hack the PS3, something which could maybe pose a risk to Sony from professional pirates, but was still not easily actionable for most people. So that was not too outrageous. But then Geohot, possibly eager to stake some sort of claim for himself since his earlier exploit had been mostly neutralized and his thunder stolen by fail0verflow, used this discovery to find out the PS3 root key - something that would make piracy EXTREMELY CONVENIENT, not just for pirates, but even for slightly technical-minded individuals - and then performed the godawful act of posting this to the World Wide Web.
I think Sony are certainly right in trying to protect their investment and means of making money (I think any of us would, too, if we were placed in a similarly impossible situation. I don't think any of the people defending the hackers would be as understanding if it was their means of earning that was jeopardized by this action). One potential misstep Sony may have made is in suing fail0verflow, as in my opinion, all they announced was the know-how to give you the means to expend effort yourself and hack into the PS3, hardly lawsuit material imo. But what Geohot did was inescapably wrong. He is not a kid anymore, he knows the potentially destructive effects such an open hack can have on a business.
Doesn't this have legitimate uses outside of copyright infringement?
Possibly - but the VERY REAL DANGER is that the majority of use will be exactly that - copyright infringement. And that is something Hotz is quite aware of. You do not open up an appliance you have bought and post it's secrets for the world to use and abuse. If you discovered it's secrets, fair enough - more power to you. But when you use that knowledge for bragging rights in a manner designed to weaken the business of an entity (be it an individual or a major corporation), that is either wilful damage or gross negligience.
I try to refrain from mentioning 'right' and 'wrong' in my posts without uttering the words "in my opinion" before doing so...'Right' and 'wrong' do not actually exist. They are preferences. Some people don't like murder. Some people do. Society just decided what laws it wanted to enact, but its views on morality are not factual.
I could have a discussion about morality all day with you :) . And to a certain extent that is true - the morality of a place/time/culture may be completely different from that of another. But if we are going to go with individual morality, that is a VERY, VERY gray area. A pedophile may be able to justify his/her own actions to himself/herself. Would you still defend that person's rights to his/her own morality, especially if the victim in question happened to be related to you? Would you be as understanding if the victim is somebody you actually sympathize with? I apologize for the extreme example, but I felt it was necessary to make a point. As you said, morality may be relative, but there can be said to be one core tenet in the universe - do not harm another being knowingly. Now, Sony is hardly a pure innocent individual, but the fact remains that harm, potentially great harm, has been done to it's videogames/movie business. And I, for one, happen to think Sony are absolutely in the right in this one (that does not mean I wish for Hotz's career/freedom/finances to be endangered, however).
I don't see anything wrong with it. Screaming "piracy" doesn't seem much different than screaming "terrorism" when you want to take something away from everyone. Or am I missing something here (does it have legitimate uses)?
That's your weakest point. What, exactly, are Sony taking away from people? The OtherOS feature? I did not agree with their actions, but I could certainly understand where they were coming from. The central point here is that if Hotz had not used the OtherOS feature to work out a hack and then made that public for bragging rights in the first place, Sony would NEVER have taken away the OtherOS feature from the PS3 Fats. However you spin the facts, you can't escape this one.
That's where your mental exercise falls apart. By advertising OtherOS as a feature of the device, OtherOS was one of the "express purposes" for which Sony had released the console. OtherOS was a contributing factor to many people's decision to purchase a PS3, including my own.
Agreed. Sony should not have removed the OtherOS. That being said, the decision to remove OtherOS was hardly arbitrary - it originated from Geohot's actions, which catapulted Sony into (an unfortunately rash) action.
If any entity -- whether a multinational corporation or a guy in his garage -- advertises a feature and then later arbitrarily removes the feature from already-purchased products, then that entity is definitely *not* entitled to sue its customers when they try to get that functionality back.
However, Geohot releasing the root key to the ENTIRE WORLD does NOT constitute just "trying to get the functionality back". This action constitutes releasing a hack which will make piracy easy to the entire world.
And that is definitely not right, however you spin it.
Just because Sony is a huge multinational corporation and Geohot an individual does not automatically make Sony wrong and Geohot right.
If I put myself in Sony's place, I'd have kept OtherOS. Just because a few people abuse something doesn't mean it should be removed for everyone.
If I had been in Sony's place, I might have kept OtherOS too (hence the knee-jerk reaction comment in my earlier post).
I know, I know. Tinkering with your own property is bad because "copyright infringement" or "DMCA!" If you do so much as utter those words, you now have the high 'moral' (subjective, so I honestly can't believe people use this argument) grounds!
You are clutching at strawman arguments here - You CAN tinker with YOUR property as much as you want - I don't think Sony has any real problem with that. There is no problem EVEN when you tinker with your property to the extent that it makes piracy easy.
The problem happens when you make such information PUBLIC to such an extent so that EVERY pirate in the WORLD can start "production".
Are you really saying that making such a hack widely open to SUCH AN EXTENT is really in the right? Every human being innately knows right from wrong - it's preferences that cloud the judgment.
Sony has probably been in the wrong (and on the wrong side of the law) hundreds of times before this.
But not THIS time.
Imagine this scenario. I purchase a Swiss-Army knife on the promise that it has 12 attachments that can perform a number of functions. After I purchase it, two of those features are removed. (Let's not forget that Sony also removed backwards compatiblity, even though briefly they had support for it with software emulation, so it doesn't require the hardware chip). It is deemed illegal for third parties to modify the Swiss-Army knife, but a third-party posts a tutorial that shows me how to get a bottle-opener back on my knife when I paid for that functionality. As an end-user, I'm not that concerned that someone broke a fairly silly law simply by providing me with the information to add back in functionality I paid for. I'm upset that it was removed in the first place.
Imagine this one: YOU created the Swiss-army knife. You sold it - then SOMEONE found out that two of the attachments you created could potentially be used to break into YOUR safe (a stretch, but bear with me - this is just to demonstrate that it hurts YOUR bottom-line), so you decided to remove these. Would you blame yourself for removing it or would you blame the guy who publicized the information as to how to break into your safe?
And sorry to say this, but you are reaching with the BC functionality - it was removed in SUBSEQUENT models because it was adding cost for little returns. And Sony was NOT stopping you from buying the original models with full BC, nor did it advertise full BC with non BC models - I have one of the originals with full BC, and that functionality has NOT been removed. As it did not pose a threat to Sony.
I could try to see it from Sony's perspective, except for the fact that I'm a consumer. And this is coming from a guy who has long defended Sony. Even though I was upset over the rootkit fiasco, I assumed it was one division of a massive company and I'd give them another shot. I purchased a Sony surround sound system, a new Bravia and a PS3. But really I'm not very happy with Sony removing functionality from a device I purchased.
So you are saying that because you are a consumer, you find it hard to see from Sony's perspective. And yet viewing things from the hacker's perspective is apparently not too hard for you. Where does being a consumer fit in with the hacker's utterly immoral (in my opinion) point-of-view? It's not too hard - the perspective I'm talking about has little to do with consumers/manufacturers/service providers/hackers/crooks.
All it has to do is with simple right and wrong.
Also, from reading most of Slashdot, it seems as if a large number of people are Sony-haters (esp on this page), and are allowing this hate to guide their sense of scruples - hardly an impartial perspective (not pointing fingers at you, btw)
Even the moderators are in on this. For example, take a look at the modding pattern - you'll see that any post favoring Sony - no matter how evenly worded - remains at 1 (or 0 in the case of Anonymous Cowards), while ANY post criticizing Sony and/or favoring the hackers - no matter how well or poorly worded it may be - is eligible for a mod value greater than 1. Go through the entire page and tell me if I'm wrong
I know that this goes against what I said in my first post - i.e. "sane, rational people" - but at that time I had not read through the whole page. Reading this page from top to bottom has given me much cause to doubt the impartiality of the majority of the people evangelizing the hackers.
I'm not one of these guys who thinks piracy is great and that ip stands for "imaginary property". I believe people deserve to make money off their content. So I can understand where Sony is coming from. The problem is two-fold. 1 - They did advertise features and then take them away. If I'm forced to use custom firmware to get those features back, then I don't have a problem with Geohot enabling people to write custom firmware. 2 - When Geohot approached Sony first, they had an opportunity to make their console more secure. Instead they decided to piss in the face of a guy trying to help them. If I were Sony in this scenario, then I would have accepted the help of someone who discovered the exploit. That is just smart business.
Here's another exercise (bear with me): Again, put yourself in Sony's place. Now imagine Geohot came to you, and told you of a potential exploit he had discovered (while at the same time witholding details of the actual exploit, otherwise you would have had the opportunity to act on it beforehand). You decided the offer was not worth it and refused it. DOES THAT JUSTIFY Geohot publicly revealing the hack? That's like Geohot telling you "take me on or else..."
Also, and again, they took those features away BECAUSE OF THE FEAR that the aforesaid feature would lead to potential hack that pirates could use for piracy. While I do think that Sony's response with OtherOS removal was rash, it certainly CANNOT justify opening up the machine to such massive potential abuse.
Spin it whichever way, I do not think Geohot or fail0verflow have the high moral ground here
Also, from reading most of Slashdot, it seems as if a large number of people are Sony-haters (esp on this page), and are allowing this hate to guide their sense of scruples - hardly an impartial perspective (not pointing fingers at you, btw)
GeoHot released a very minor exploit that by itself did not allow pirated games. And ArsTechnica's story suggests GeoHot approached Sony and offered to help them make the PS3 more secure and prevent piracy. Sony wasn't interested. If you discover a security exploit, the ethical thing to do is to inform that vendor first, which he did. Sony didn't listen to him, and then he released that exploit publicly. Furthermore, Sony said their response would be to completely remove the OtherOS option. I'm going to wager that wasn't the only way to protect against the initial exploit. GeoHot said in response he was now motivated to completely hack the PS3. I don't have to assume it was his motivation since he said it directly.
By itself, it may not have allowed pirated games, but as I said, it had the apparent potential to make it possible, and THAT is what Sony reacted to by cutting the OtherOS functionality from Fats.
And this still does not justify opening a system WIDE OPEN to all kinds of abuse in the manner Geohot has. Where was all his honor when he released something of this magnitude OPENLY on the Internet?
The fact remains that OtherOS was allowed until it was initially used to perform a hack, at which point Sony reacted (possibly in a knee-jerk fashion). And fail0verflow has used this as a reason or an excuse to justify giving ALL THE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD the means to hack into the PS3, for whatever purpose. And then Geohot used this to do JUST THAT.
Here's an exercise: Forget for a moment that Sony is a multi-billion dollar gigantic media corporation. Imagine that the PS3 had been constructed by YOU, yourself, for the express purposes for which Sony has released this console. Now imagine that everything Sony has had to do right up to the point before suing these people. If it was YOU, and you had faced a risk to your means of earning, would you have stood idly by while praising the hackers for what they did?
You don't even need to answer me: just be honest about this to yourself
"GeoHot didn't hack the PS3 until Sony removed functionality."
Isn't it the other way around?
As far as I can see it, THIS was the correct sequence of events:
1) Sony release the Fat PS3, and advertise OtherOS for these.
2) Sony release the Slim PS3, and do NOT advertise OtherOS for these. People are given a choice and a timeline by which to buy the Fats.
3) The Fats gave people the chance to tinker with custom OS installation using OtherOS functionality. Geohot abused this by using this to come up with a potential hack.
4) Sony scrambled to shut this door opened by Geohot by removing this functionality, i.e. the OtherOS functionality was removed from PS3s that supported it BECAUSE OF GEOHOT.
5) Fail0verFlow use this as a reason (or an excuse) to hack the PS3, ostensibly for homebrew.
6) Geohot uses Fail0verFlow's efforts to release the PS3 root key on the Internet, potentially leaving the gates COMPLETELY OPEN.
7) Sony retaliate by suing (while scrambling to shut the doors opened by this potentially destructive action of Geohot).
People seem to think Sony is at fault for being hacked and the hackers are some sort of saints for pointing out Sony's weaknesses and MAKING THEM PUBLIC BEFORE GIVING SONY A CHANCE TO ACT ON THESE, and I find it hard to believe that such sane, rational people as frequent this site can accept this rationale on the part of the hackers.
Too many people are eager to blame Sony over this - while forgetting that it was the initial potential threat of hacking (the first one by Geohot which depended upon OtherOD) that galvanised them into removing that functionality from the older models. I can't really find a reason to blame Sony for THAT.
Well, I own the Sun. Every living being on the Earth owes me as long as MY Sun sustains them :)
That quote sounds worryingly similar to what the BushCo regime used to say. Something like "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear". Hopefully this was just a slip of tongue and mind, and not an insight into the way Schmidt thinks.
Looks like Murdoch came through...
Different Color, Same Story.
So... business as usual?
Regarding your signature: "Religion Breeds Terrorism." - - Timothy McClanahan I beg to differ - It's mostly a lack of true understanding regarding one's religion that begets religious violence. As for terrorism, my opinion is - it's rarely religious in nature - there are probably several other reasons for it though - political, economical, sociological, etc
Exactly. I had reached that same conclusion years earlier, and I'm not a researcher of anything. So apparently it took a team of "researchers" to experiment and come to a conclusion which I had figured out using common sense and logic.
"Well you get 5 free Blu-ray movies when you buy a PS3" => I believe HD-DVD Players have a similar promotion as well, and so HD-DVD Players' attach rate should be at around that rate as well, isn't it? So how come it isn't? Stop deluding yourself that everyone else other than Toshiba/Microsoft are lying.